Grandchild name

I was just thinking about successful, even famous people, with gender-ambivalent names – from Vivian Fuchs to Beverley Nichols. Didn't do them any harm.

It is us oldies who get our knickers in a twist about names. Little kids tend not think twice as they are all fairly new to them and do not assign gender to names! Charlie/Taylor /Chelsea /Jody are names I have encountered for boys and girls in the same class.(not all four names at once!)

I was thinking that a name I might struggle with as a boys name is Hilary [possibly because I really love it as a girls name] but then I remembered Hilary Benn and it had never crossed my mind to find that odd. My main problem with Vivian would be thinking of The Young Ones .

Ah Tegan but I believe his was spelled "Vyvyan" but could be wrong, often am.......

And of course Vivian Stanshall of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band.
[nostalgia emoticon]

They're touring again [obviously without him ].

Vyvyen Basterd; you're right phoenix. Hadn't realised he was a medical student but it makes sense to me now.

What's the name?!

If it's a Hilary/ Lyndsey...that's fine and wonderfully fresh. Did anyone see about the baby in USA named Messiah?! That's some name to live up to.

Am I right in thinking that in Germany a gender ambivalent name cannot legally be given to a child?

Boy I knew was called Hawthorn as conceived under that bush - thank goodness it was not a rose bush!

Rudyard Kipling was so named because he was conceived on the banks of Lake Rudyard in the Midlands.

I didn't know we had any lakes in the Midlands . Was it a filled in gravel pit?

We've got loads of those Tegan

Just Googled Tegan it's in Staffs - the other bit of the Midlands.

Y'learn something new every day on Gransnet! What with Tolkien being inspired by Edgbaston Reservoir we've got quite a cultural heritage under our feet in the Midlands/East Midlands [or 'East Middle Earth' as I like to call it ].

I've never really understood how people can be so sure where their babies are conceived.
Does that mean that they only have intercourse on rare occasions during that month and that they knew exactly where they were?

Isn't it strange how names are decided?

Twenty-odd years ago, SIL was going to call her son Arthur (popular again now, of course, but back then, it was still very much an old man's name). Apparently, the midwife told her in no uncertain terms that she couldn't saddle a baby with a cat's name (remember the cat food advert?) and SIL chose another name.

Even my own name was down to the midwife who had just delivered me - when my mum said she was going to call me Rachel, the midwife said, "* is a much nicer name", and my mum went along with it. I only discovered this a few weeks ago, and thought it was a coincidence because Rachel was the name that DH and I would have used if we had had a daughter.

A friend of mine was meant to be called Carol, but when her father was sent to register the birth he forgot it, so plumped for the first name that came into his head - she ended up as Joan instead!

Well Yoga I suppose you might well have been on holiday in Brooklyn, or Florence, or Paris for a whole week and as there are only2-3 days a month when conception occurs, you could be fairly certain that's where it happened.
But I agree, it does seem a little unlikely that people would return several times over the course of a week to do it under the same hawthorn bush

I know the night my first child was concieved. I just KNOW that that was 'the' night.

Do you remember Johnny Cash's song "A Boy Named Sue"? (I think it was Johnny Cash). That would be difficult to live with!

My daughter's OH wanted to call their son Jake - he associated it with the pop song "My Brother Jake". My daughter, on the other hand, associated it with the Rolf Harris song "Jake the Peg" - so not exactly "cool". They compromised and made it his middle name.

It's not worth falling out about a name, however much you dislike it.

Sorry - just noticed gillybob's already mentioned Sue.

I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that Soo is a perfectly acceptable male Chinese name, or Thai nickname.

Lindsay is also from a surname (sire name) therefore using it for males is fine. What weird preconceptions we have in our ignorance of history!

It has only just occurred to me that two of my DDs have names that can be male or female. One is Beverly and the other Lindsay. I am told they are both spelt the male way, can't say it has ever bothered the girls and they get cross when people spell them wrongly.

I recently found out where I was conceived when I found my mother's diary for 1945. She had been demobbed but my father was still in the RAF. He had a few days leave in October and they went to Worthing. A few weeks later there was a note in the diary saying that she was expecting a baby and I arrived the following June. Just as well the fashion for using the place as a name hadn't started then - wouldn't have fancied being Worthing or perhaps Cavendish aafter the hotel

My last baby was named after the two midwives who delivered her - they both had the same name! And it was top of our shortlist anyway so it seemed fated.